Driving Performance, Delivering Results.

Multi-Site National Defense Contractor

Performing energy audits to reinforce sustainability credentials

Challenge

A national defense contractor needed enhanced ASHRAE Level I energy audits to maintain its sustainability credentials with the U.S. government and to enable continuous improvement in energy efficiency.

Company leadership selected us to perform energy audits for ten facilities in seven states. Ranging in vintage from the 1950s to the 2000s, the ten facilities included research and development sites as well as manufacturing sites. The latter consist of three to four buildings apiece, including office, assembly, and testing spaces.

Our assignment prerequisites included achieving applicable security clearances for our team and participating in mandatory local site safety training; we also had to adhere to limitations on allowable site and equipment photography.

The scope was enhanced to include more extensive analysis of capital investment opportunities that were identified during the energy audits.

We were tasked not only with delivering consistently high-quality reports, but also with establishing internal benchmarking metrics that we tracked throughout project execution.

Result

Our team met or exceeded all project requirements, identified both lost-cost and capital-driven energy-saving opportunities at each of the ten facilities.

We completed financial analysis of each energy-saving opportunity, calculating simple payback, net present value (NPV), and internal rate of return (IRR). We also completed a separate utility rate analysis for each facility so that our calculations of the potential reduction in energy cost were based on the facility’s unique unit cost of energy.

Due to their comprehensive content, we characterized our final reports as more robust than an ASHRAE Level I energy audit but less extensive than an ASHRAE Level II energy audit.

Based on full implementation of the energy-saving measures we uncovered through our technical analysis, we projected a reduction in annual energy use ranging from 10% to 30% per facility, depending on the type and scale of equipment and lighting upgrades. Low-cost measures alone typically accounted for a reduction of 10% to 15%.

Aggregating all of our recommendations for the portfolio, we presented the contractor with a detailed plan for achieving nearly a 10% annual energy cost reduction.